


What It Feels Like to Die

by Notsohappycamper



Category: Far Cry (Video Games), Far Cry 5
Genre: All Seeds Love The Deputy, Captivity, F/F, F/M, Forced Drug Use, Hurt/Comfort, Mind Games, Psychological Torture, Slow Burn, Torture, Vulgar Deputy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-15
Updated: 2018-05-31
Packaged: 2019-05-07 12:57:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14671575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Notsohappycamper/pseuds/Notsohappycamper
Summary: The road to Atonement is buried in sacrifice and pain. They drag you through it, hoping you'll break. You plan to prove them wrong.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Faith John Jacob Joseph Seed, I want them all, my sin is Greed.

Passing out right now would be Heaven, if this wasn't the furthest place from Heaven since Hell.

He backhands you with a smile when you interrupt his anecdote about the most beautiful beaches in Florida. You couldn't give two shits where he spent lavish vacations as a rich lawyer. Not when this college-educated, state-certified lawyer is carving "JOHN IS MY SAVIOR" from your knuckles to your shoulder in capital letters and cutting damn near to the bone.

Time slowed to a crawl ten minutes and five ounces of blood ago. You started so strong, grit your teeth and dug in your heels against the pain. Now you're army-crawling to the finish line, the painstakingly slow curve of the final R on your upper bicep, but passing out right now would be Heaven, so the lawyer, judge, and executioner hauls you back to your sentencing with a slap and a fistful of hair.

You still don't look at him, don't give him that satisfaction. When you stare at the ceiling instead, it stares back and asks where this went so wrong. Somewhere between Fall's End and Rae-Rae's pumpkin patch a few hours prior, you would tell it if it could listen. Two pickups flanked yours and the one tattooed man whose brains didn't get splattered all over the steering wheel shot a Bliss-coated bullet through your passenger side window.

Well, you're not too sure if his brain is currently intact or not. You only got one shell into the side of his truck before swearing at white sparkles in your vision. You remember the shotgun recoil nearly knocking your drugged ass out all on its own. You remember giving Sharky the day off before you gunned it south out of Whitetail with only a pretty cougar chasing your bumper, but you don't realize yet that that was the biggest mistake of your life.

You'll realize soon. Soon, he won't let you forget.

"You need to let go." Gifting this man good looks and an intelligent, articulate voice must have been a joke on God's part. At least he's stopped rambling about his boring vacations to white sand beaches. "Letting go, _really_  letting go, it's a death before rebirth. It feels... incredible." The knife twists just enough to make you shudder. "I know this hurts, and I know you'd disagree, but what you feel now is not dying. I will show you, Deputy, what it feels like to die."

Maybe it's the pain or the drugs, but his backwards logic is incomprehensible beyond that he loves to hurt you and would like to continue doing so. He's damn good at it; your right arm is burning like Hellfire and pulsing in time with your heartbeat. This brand is leagues deeper than what's on your chest, though not deep enough to kill. No, John's not here to take your life, he's here to give it to you.

"There," he sighs fondly, finally, a dinner bell for relief or something close to it. His bloody palm smooths down his work as if stroking a pampered cat.

"Ah, f-fuck!" you half-stutter, half-yelp, flinching.

It's penned fancy like print from a storybook. It'd make a beautiful sleeve for one lucky Peggy who actually believed its sick message. A sleeve that you'll probably wear for the rest of your life. JOHN IS MY SAVIOR isn't some papercut that needs a bandaid and a week to heal. JOHN IS MY SAVIOR might as well buy you a ring and a five-tiered wedding cake by the looks of it.

"Fuck..."

"The truth," he strafes you, admiring his work, "can hurt." Blood drips in slow globs from his fingertips. "It _should_ hurt. If it doesn't, I will make it. Rip you open and fix you from the inside out. I will save you, whether you want to be saved or not! You have my word on that.

"And now, I suppose," he chuckles, spreads his arms, "you have my word on _you_."

"You'll fuckin'... regret this..."

Maybe the emptiest threat in existence, maybe not. The facts stand that you're tethered down, half-drugged, and he's clutching a knife with your blood on it. Everything about this - the red on the floor that's not yours, the memory of being here with Hudson weeks ago, what John Seed is, what he is willing to do, the lengths he will go to - everything is stacked against you.

Still, you can't not mutter bloated threats, even with the odds stacked, maybe especially so. It was Eli who once told you to keep that fire in your eyes burning strong. You didn't have the heart to tell him it's not some higher moral compass that fuels it. Sometimes it's just spite. Sometimes hatred. Sometimes it's not the innocent woman crying for help that spurns you into action, it's the look of the son of a bitch holding the knife to her throat. What do they call you after all? Wrath?

The memories are fuzzy. Dozens of eyes in the compound fixed on you like laser sights. Dogs raving mad, snouts mashed against the steel fence. Joseph preaching and offering his wrists. John's gaze never left you once in that dim church, never wavered. None of theirs did. You've never had the upper hand. The odds were stacked from the start.

In this dull red light, in your peripheral, John's lips curve a smirk then a smile that's so genuine it reaches his eyes.

"You'll need to wipe that with warm water every hour or so. Else, it'll never scar. Yes?" Cares more about it scarring than becoming infected. He cut the right sleeve off your shirt, too, to display it like a trophy. "Yes?"

That gold watch on his wrist catches your eye so you stare at that instead of his face. The way it pisses him off is a bonus.

"Yes," he concludes for you, bitter. "I personally made sure your accommodations were prepared, Deputy. They're not the best we have to offer, but I do hope they're to your liking."

"I hope you choke on your brother's dick-"

He backhands you so hard that your cheek burns hotter than your arm does for a few short, glorious seconds before he yanks your head back up to face him, but it's worth it. It's childish and crude and lessens the infuriating truth that he gets what he wanted in the end. You have nowhere to look but those baby blue eyes. Blue like the oceans of those beaches he was talking about, blue like the sky must be in Heaven.

"You're lucky. That Joseph sees  _so_ much in you."

"Joseph will die just like you," you pant, all hatred, all Wrath. "You'll all pay for..."

The threat corrodes into a sob, because the drugs are wearing off and are replaced by a bone-deep ache that spreads through your arm like blood in a river. You've been shot in the arm before, Hell, even caught a couple bullets with your stomach. Doesn't make this any less agonizing. Tears surface that you refuse to let fall. John's baby blues watch them glisten, unhinged, devoted, and sated.

For a second of fear and disgust, you believe he's moving to kiss you when he leans in. Your heart doesn't stop hammering when he doesn't. He presses his cheek to yours, beard grazing your jaw, breath warm on your ear. He stinks of dirt and gunpowder, but then again, who in Hope County doesn't.

On the tail end of the Bliss, the rush of pain distracts you from his other hand clasping your injured shoulder, right over the O and R in SAVIOR. It's like suffering whiplash; this contrast of gentle and hard, hitting and caressing, and how breakneck fast John flips the switch.

"Show me what Joseph sees," he whispers on your cheek. It's so muted and desperate you don't know whether it's meant for you or not. "Show me what Joseph sees... _Show me_."

Your mouth falls open, but you're speechless. When you try to lean away, you feel his lips part against your skin. Feel his beard brush your face, feel him murmur a prayer on the shell of your ear. Then, in the same breath, you feel his blunt fingernails dig into the letters on your shoulder and split open the flesh until you feel him under your skin.

It's when you scream against the agonizing pain and fight against your constraints, against his mouth, his touch, that you start to realize.

You start to realize just how big of a mistake you have made.

* * *

Your prepared accommodations are a screened window with bars and a thick door that locks from the outside. A twin-sized bed against the far white wall, an empty wooden dresser, and a half-functioning radio that only tunes to the Peggy station. Nothing to brighten the room except natural sunlight, probably to keep you from hanging yourself with a lamp cord. You wonder how many bodies they went through before that became a rule.

A brown washrag and a basin of lukewarm water are at the foot of the bed where they'll remain untouched. It's mental torture to even think of that threadbare rag touching the open wounds of your right arm. It hangs limp at your side as you scan outside the window for landmarks or signs of life. Besides a squirrel on a tree branch, there is very little of any.

The size of the building is also a mystery, whether it's a one room shack or not, so you press an ear to the door and try to peer under it to no avail.

Memories bloom like thrown paint on wet paper; passing out as John dug his fingernails under your skin, groping down the letters to the tune of whispered prayers he kissed against your ear. His other hand stroked the WRATH on your chest gentle like the touch of a lover, a sharp contrast to how the latter half of the carved SAVIOR on your bicep is stretched and bloody, dark with irritation.

This beautiful lettering, JOHN IS MY SAVIOR, pretty swirl of the J parallel with your pinky so you can read it like a book if you hook your arm in front of you. Like he wanted it a constant reminder, something you can look to in times of need and feel hope from its message. You consider how long it would take to bludgeon your arm off with the blunt edge of the radio.

The first hour of captivity is spent poking for structural weaknesses. The second pondering the validity of nearby objects as last-ditch weapons. The third cooking in the sun and watching warm rays reflect off the basin water.

It's not so much that panic creeps up as you wait cross-legged on the bed, picking at blood under your nails. It's more that, in the silence, harebrained theories tumble in cycles: that they'll starve you 'til you're begging to join them, that they'll ignite the building and burn you alive. That any minute now, a Peggy with a shotgun will kick the door off the hinges and blow your brains out. Maybe even John Seed himself.

So when footsteps thud outside your room, you're by the door before you know it, left hand a fist.

You've had hours to plan an attack, to visualize punching the daylights out of a Peggy, docking John Seed square in the nose, even picture one of the beauties you hire as backup bursting in and swooping you off. As stupid and obvious as it seems now, the one thing you didn't plan for is him.

A few things happen when the door creaks open: your fist connects with Joseph Seed's jaw, you thrash like an animal when he seizes your left arm and tries to crowd you back into the room, and you yell something barely human when he grabs your right arm, too, squeezing like he's out to milk blood from your veins. Both arms pinned, you resort to slamming your body against his bare chest like a bulldozer, get him to stumble a step back, then do it again and again until you've forced him into the doorway. You go double time when he finally gets the bright idea to brace an elbow in the door frame. Your arm wrenches so badly it might be out of place.

"Deputy," he has the audacity to breathe, eyes intense, understanding - always _understanding_.

You hate it so much you rear back and headbutt him. You almost blackout compared to how Joseph only shakes his head and grunts, so it does more harm to you than him, but it's the thought that counts. It's the way his glasses slip from his nose and clatter to the floor. It's the way you look down and stomp, feel them crunch beneath your boot heel. A petty victory, but it's the thought that counts.

"You'll drown in your sin," he hisses, pushing back hard enough to slide your feet. You don't even care that he's dead right, that you're the ugly, seething poster child of Wrath right now. What you do care about is head butting him again.

It's a disaster this time - you almost blacked out the first time, remember? Your reward is an embarrassing combo of jamming your nose against his and biting your own lip until it splits. His patience through it all only pisses you off more.

"Where am I?" You lick your sore lip then spit out red that lands on his chest and rolls down slow. He doesn't even blink.

"You're safe."

"What happened to Peaches?"

"I'm sorry, Deputy." Joseph scoots forward, muscles tense, and gets an inch on you. "I don't know anyone by that name."

"The cougar that was running behind my truck, asshole."

"If that's the case then I can imagine it was chased off or killed."

"You son of a _bitch_..."

"Understand that I have no control over the actions John takes," he says, getting another subtle inch on pushing you back into the room. Too tired to fight it, all you do is grit your teeth. "Though I cannot argue with his results."

"Fuck him," you spit in pain, frustration, lack of anything else to say to the monster before you. When you yank your right arm, Joseph doesn't budge; his grip only tightens, stretches your cuts, makes you clench your jaw until you can't hold back a scream. He's not even shoving anymore. Doesn't have to, when you're limp in his hold.

"You hate him, don't you?" Fingertips trace the JOHN on your skin in reverence. That rosary cord twined around his hand turns painful into unbearable. Goodbye, all the blood clots that formed over the past few hours. "He cuts deeper and deeper each day. Past sin, past atonement. I fear what the deepest cut will do to him."

"Are you kidding me? He's _sick_."

"He did this, too?" Joseph presses fingers to your shoulder, to the spread cuts John fingered like he was trying to open a lemon.

You flinch away and glare, all the answer he needs.

"Oh, John..." His eyes flash to yours. "He's the love of my life." Those blue eyes narrow and his grip tightens and that declaration of love sounds more like a threat than anything else.

"Get your hands off me."

Simple as that, he releases your wrists, his right hand now slick with your blood.

Don't feel bad about slumping to the bed, because your arm is now leaking enough to collect in puddles on the floorboards. Don't feel bad about gasping for breath and using that shitty washcloth to stem the bleeding. Don't feel bad about the urge to sob like a newborn at the pain.

Joseph leaves, locks the door behind him, and comes back minutes later with gauze and clean hands, though his rosary bracelet is still dyed red and probably always will be. When he kneels by your legs, he should be counting his lucky stars that pure exhaustion keeps you from kicking him in the face. You sit and watch him wrap your arm in gauze with gentle fingers, questioning what your life has become.

"God's plan for you does not end here, Deputy."

"Goody," you mutter. The wire frame of his glasses is bent by the door, both lenses cracked.

You had a pair of sunglasses yourself before the capture party nearly ran you off the road. A nice dark pair flicked down when fishing with Cheeseburger, or sniping Peggies with Grace at forced baptisms, or driving to the nearest town for dinner with Boomer in the bed of your truck. You had a lot of things.

Now, you have a God-fearing wackjob smoothing bandages over wounds his brother gave you, kneeling beside a bed you don't own but will sleep on tonight, and probably the next and the next. You have nothing in your pockets, no gun on your back, no communication to the outside world.

They got their wish, right? They got you. And isn't that all they wanted? Why Joseph sought you out, why John kept you hostage, why Faith fed you Bliss at every pass, and why Jacob tried his best to condition your mind? Four lunatics, and the focal point was you.

You shove Joseph off as soon as your arm's covered and try not to feel bad. You don't have to try too hard. He catches himself with a hand, gets to his feet, then plucks up his broken glasses and hooks them on the waistband of his jeans. He doesn't seem to care about your bloody saliva drying on his chest.

"By all means, this is not the end. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths."

"You didn't give me a piss bucket," you point out, vulgar, just to shit all over his religious talk. A bitter taste curdles in your mouth when he does you one-up, as calm and understanding as ever.

"There is nothing to worry about. We will provide the essentials. And God will provide all else that you need."

"Hm," you hum, annoyed, defeated.

The man wasn't lying.

When you refuse to piss yourself later that evening and yell out the window with faint hope of catching someone's attention, someone actually comes. Whoever they are, they unlock the door and are gone by the time you open it.

You're not in a shack. It's a small house. There's a bathroom and a kitchen with empty shelves connected to an even emptier family room. No furniture, not even a chair. Only one front door, locked from the outside. Every window is barred, too. On the plus side, there are two rolls of double ply toilet paper waiting for you on the bathroom counter. How sweet of them.

You keep yelling threats after using the bathroom, roaming from window to window. Your gatekeeper doesn't come back and neither does Joseph. With lack of else to do and to avoid sitting on the floor, you go back to the bedroom, lie there until sunset, and eventually fall into pain-induced sleep to a song about Bliss from the radio, pinky-promising yourself that tomorrow you'll break out of here and get your freedom back.

Exhaustion makes it impossible to hear the door creak open again minutes after you start to dream.

* * *

And so you wake up in the arms of a man you've never seen before.

"Ah, wha..." spills from your lips, admittedly a butchered way of pronouncing 'who are you and what are you doing to me?'

He has a blond beard, strong arms, judging from the iron grip under your legs and back, and smells like burnt snickerdoodle cookies. Though that last observation may be related to the luminescent butterflies flitting around his head.

"Blissed me again, you fucks..." you think you mumble, but when the Peggy looks down with a disturbed expression, you're quite sure that's not at all what you said. "Stop with the damn Bliss, don't... you know I'm..."

Talking is too much work, so you call it a job well done and give up. You're moving; you can tell that much. Tree limbs pass against the night sky, and figures walk through tall grass beside you. Somewhere in the distance, a wolf howls. The man holds you close so you don't jostle, barely feel any of the steps he takes. You want to tell him you appreciate it but can't get the words out.

"No, that one is special. Bring her here."

Faith's voice. Distinct from how it drips like candy in your ears, soft as the voice of an angel.

You don't say anything, but you must be talking because your lips are moving and the man holding you looks down. His brown eyes glow like a wolf's in the moonlight, reflections of clouds drifting in his pupils. You're floating at this point, almost falling, the both of you, so you touch the man's face, drag your fingertips over his features to make sure he's still alive. Thank God that he is.

Blotches are leaking through the white bandage on your right arm, contorting into crimson demons who screech that you'll cause the end of the world. The only way you can fight is scratching 'til they leave. Problem is they don't. They stretch and yawn and grow while more spawn in their place, all yelling about your hand in the apocalypse.

My God, you think, tearing at the demons, John was right. You do need him to save you. Pained yells peal so loud in your ears that you flinch. You don't realize they're from you.

"How much Bliss did you use?" Like an answer from God, you heard John's voice nearby, though for some reason, he sounds upset. He really shouldn't, so high up in the clouds, so close to his beloved salvation. "For Heaven's sake, were you trying to make an Angel?"

You call his name - you think? - and he glances over.

"How much did you _use_?" he asks again. Faith just sways, an angel herself, maybe even a hallucination, and laughs and laughs. You start laughing, too.

Everyone else in binds is laughing by the time the blond lowers you from his wings to shallow waters. Their smiles look more like mouths open with horror, eyes wide and all on you. They kneel by the water, arms behind their backs, and cheer you on as a choir, encourage you to lie down in the mud and tilt your head back until water is lapping at your temples.

"I can't do this." John still sounds so upset. You want to reach out and calm him, because he's so bitchy when he's angry, but he's much too far away. There's an ocean of clouds bubbling between you, like his white sand beaches in Florida. "This... This is not a cleansing."

"This is pathetic," Jacob says. You didn't even notice the oldest Seed float up here. Maybe that means Joseph made it here, too. "Where is Joseph?"

You nod to the question with a smile.

"Do not doubt yourself, John. If he were here, he'd tell you every struggle will resolve if you have faith," you hear Faith promise. She's good at promises. She promised you that Bliss would make you whole, and you feel pretty complete right now.

"Don't give me that bullshit." John seems to think so less.

Jacob barks out a deep laugh to the sky while Faith grabs John's hand and entwines their fingers, frowning and trying to tug him to you.

The desire to please, to prove yourself worthy, swells and pushes you onto your stomach, but before you can dunk your face, you're hauled up by your neck to your knees. Those crimson demons on your arm are melting, runny light red compared to the dark splotches they were before. They're being burned by purity, and you can feel it. It **_burns_**.

"It's... It's working!" you lift your hands and cry to God. My God, it really is.

Behind you, Jacob repeats, "Pathetic."

You'll never find out you didn't say a single coherent word that night. That you just babbled nonsense while clinging to Jacob's shirt, tried to press your foreheads together and kiss him when he stopped you from drowning yourself in the river. You'll have a bruise later that you can't see but will feel. It will be in the shape of his fingers on either side of the back of your neck.

Joseph's gauze will be the only thing that saved your nails from goring your arm to shreds, but right now it's an obstacle you're trying to tear off with your teeth. You do such a good job that another angel binds your wrists in front of you and tosses you over their shoulder, surely to fly you to the gates of Heaven now that you are clean, and you're laughing so hard that you're crying over the realization that God is real.

He pulled you from the waters. He burned the demons off your arm.

As you're carried off, you think you see Joseph at the dark edge of the clearing, but your eyes are full of tears and whoever it is looks more like Jesus Christ to you, watching from a bed of glowing flowers.

Your bound hands extend to Him, desperate to be held, to be happy and safe and pure forever, and you pray to your newfound God when He reaches out in turn that, whatever may happen, you will get to see Him again beyond the pearly Gates of Eden.


	2. Chapter 2

"This will never heal..."

Nominee for most astute observation: one Jonathan Seed.

"Have you been wiping it like I told you?"

And the award goes to...

"Stubborn mule," he snaps, nabs your arm - the infected one, the _bitch_ \- and yanks you out the door.

After that joke of a baptism, you awoke in drenched clothes on drenched sheets and writhing against the second worse pain of your life. Second only to when an arrow splintered off in your thigh and forced you to limp through reinforcement helicopter fire for three miles straight before flagging down help.

This was nothing like crawling through acres of dry brush bleeding out as machine gun fire popped up dirt every minute, but you still curled into a tight ball, squirmed in bed, and prayed for either relief or death, whichever should come first.

The gauze Joseph had so carefully wrapped had been redesigned from white to red, torn and exposing wounds that had somehow evolved past cuts; your skin was stretching open like petals from a flower. It was bad. It was ugly.

The following days were spent nursing that, a headache, and an oddly sore neck, bargaining for painkillers from a copper-haired Peggy who showed up to take care of you. For whatever reason, your free reign of the house had been revoked and replaced by a caterer and bathroom-escort with a five minute leniency.

You ignored the bangs on the bathroom door at first, said a big fuck you to her asinine rules, but the mayhem of her flinging the door open and dragging you off the toilet mid-shit gave you a quick attitude adjustment. Once, around day six, you slammed an elbow into her face and tried to rifle a key from her pocket. Didn't get far before the barrel of a pistol kissed your belly and she said if you died on her watch, she'd be burning in Hell right beside you.

Your one meal a day was a laughably small pile of watery mashed potatoes and charred meat from what was probably roadkill. They left out a beverage, too, so your two five-minute bathroom breaks devolved into fucked up balancing games of gulping water from the sink versus emptying your bladder. It always ends in dehydration.

Two weeks pass, and no one comes. Two weeks. You count the days making notches on the floorboard with your thumbnail.

Not speaking for days straight drives you stir-crazy, so you risk a conversation with the copper-haired Peggy one night over your food tray. Her name is Susan, she prays to Joseph Seed at every meal, and she's convinced you're the chosen catalyst of the Great Collapse because Joseph tells her so.

Like a good little Peggy, she reveals nothing useful, unless you count an obvious schoolgirl crush based on her smile at every mention of John's name. One night, after saying grace to Joseph Seed - though you doubt Joseph had a hand in your shitty meal at all - Susan recalls her personal battle with Envy, heavy yearning gaze glued to the JOHN on your wrist, and you think maybe going stir-crazy isn't so bad after all compared to the alternative.

Your clothes are musty, bloodstained, and hand-washed without soap every couple days for five minutes in the bathroom sink. John wrinkles his pretty nose at them when he comes to visit on day fifteen, and it feels so damn good to upset him. It's the only thing that's felt good in the past two weeks, other than the cut you bash on his cheek with your one pound radio. "Oh, John" not playing at the time is the real travesty.

He has a bottle of whiskey and a rag in one hand, your wrist in the other, pulling you through the empty house to the empty kitchen. Soon as he releases the latter, you fist his unbuttoned collar and pin him to the kitchen counter. The raised, crossed SLOTH on his chest brushes your knuckles.

"No shit this'll never heal. The fuck did you do to it?"

He blinks lazy, couldn't look less intimidated if a puppy stormed in and started nipping at his shoelaces.

"Other than gift it to you," John articulates slow as if to a child, "not a thing. I'm afraid your own sin made it worse."

"Bullshit."

"For once, Deputy, just once, try not to bite the hand reaching out to help you."

If this were Joseph Seed, you might not bite. You'd play the best hostage ever and let him clean your wound, even say a prayer and bless you if he wanted. To some extent you trust Joseph Seed. Every opportunity he's had to hurt, he's helped instead, been gentle and loving beyond comprehension as if you were one of his family, regardless of how unnerving that is.

Every opportunity John's had to help has been wracked with suffering and pain unimaginable. That's half the reason you snap like a crazed Judge when he dribbles alcohol onto the cloth and presses it to your arm. The other half is just that it stings like a motherfucker.

The bottle clatters to the floor, spills whiskey in rivulets across the tile. He uses pain against you - always has, always will, being raised with pain as a weapon. It's no surprise when pain wins and lays you out flat, hair and shirt soaking up alcohol, with him in your lap clutching your infected arm in both hands and bearing teeth like a Judge himself.

"You don't fucking _learn_ ," he growls, then twists your flesh in an Indian burn that wrings out pus and blood.

You scream and pound at the wet floor, at him, at your own arm until you're sure you're dying. Blood and whiskey permeate the air. His nice blue glasses slip from his hair and bounce off your chest.

" _Fuck_ , God, please! Please..."

"You don't. Learn," John pants against your neck. Tears slide from the corners of your eyes, injured arm limp on the floor, whiskey burning through the wounds. "You're depraved. You're sick. You don't suffer from sin; you are sin incarnate. You take and take and take, so selfish, and I can't bear to watch it anymore."

"Oh, fuck you..."

"...I'm sorry?" he breathes. "Fuck me?"

It finally sinks in that you may have fucked up, that you're dealing with a lunatic here. He could kill you and not bat an eye. He could snap and make this house your tomb, choked to death by a man throwing a shit-fit over your potty mouth.

Everything's silent and still before he moves again, but he doesn't go for the throat. This time when he touches you, it doesn't hurt at all. This time, he palms your side and opens his mouth against your neck, wet and slow, and it can't be real. It must be a delusion somehow from leftover Bliss, a strange fantasy dreamt while unconscious. But it  _is_ real.

He's groping your side and mouthing your neck, heavy, solid weight all over you. For a full minute, you lie there and struggle to process it until a light moan from his throat startles you into grabbing his shirt.

"What-" you start, but freeze and grip the fabric when he moans again and licks a stripe up your jaw.

It's a mess of a fever dream like everything else has been since you arrived in Hope County. You struggle to bear his weight and the disconcerting fact that other than seeing him upset and trying to bash his face in, this is somehow the only other thing in the past fifteen days that has felt good.

It doesn't feel normal, a murderous sadist necking you after twisting your wounds, but it does feel good. He's a nice looking guy, all beard and boyish charm, and will your relationship with the Seeds ever be normal anyway?

"You want everything, Deputy," John open-mouth kisses your neck and sighs. Rolls his hips slow and makes your breath catch. "You want this. Don't you?"

Maybe. Maybe it's worth staying here and allowing yourself something that finally feels good.

As it turns out, it doesn't matter what you want. When John Seed's in charge, John Seed gets what John Seed wants. And John Seed wants to be back on his feet mid-moan, grinning down at you lying there with your legs and mouth open like a teen caught by their parent.

"My, my," John mocks around a laugh, hard dick outlined in his jeans. "Looks like Joseph will have to be notified about your unrestrained Lust!"

If your tongue wasn't nailed down in your slack-jawed mouth, you'd tell him to take his pants off and look in a fucking mirror.

As if that never happened, he kneels, replaces his glasses, and goes back to wiping your arm with the rag he brought. When you instinctively flinch in pain, he holds your hand and tuts. You lie there watching him, stupid and aroused.

"Shh. Soon Joseph will know what you've done. And then we'll see who's right about you, won't we?"

You're still speechless and he's still hard by the time he finishes.

"Be sure to keep this clean, Dep," he smiles, sweet, and pats your shoulder. "For your sake."

"You're so fucked..." you finally find the voice to say.

The words don't falter his smile like he already knows he is.

* * *

It's equal opportunity land here in Peggy nation. There's no judgement nor discrimination in the seemingly omnibenevolent eyes of the Lord. Even sinners like yourself are due the mind-numbing drivel of prayer service which they teach you firsthand in church at Joseph Seed's morning communion.

It must be a Sunday since it's packed to the brim. You were blindfolded in your room by two Peggies, driven some odd miles in the back of a truck, and escorted to the front pew next to a tattooed woman who is staring up at Joseph like she wants new tattoos of him on each of her eyeballs. Joseph himself has had his eyes fixed on you since you plopped down and sprawled back in your seat.

He stands tall and preaches about the world ending, about nonbelievers, about the forsaken, and whatnot. He could strip naked and bust into song and dance for all you care; you zoned out about two and a half hours ago. If not for the rifle-toting guard at the entrance, you would've practiced long distance running as soon as you were dumped off the truck.

"For Eden's Gate!" the congregation cheers as you're dozing off. Your contribution is a gasp and a thud from your head hitting the back of the pew.

Fight or flight grips your heart, as if you're back outside still gunning down Peggies who shouted that very phrase as a war cry in battle. A few deep breaths calm your nerves and hammer home that you're not in the middle of a gunfight, but even then, your hands don't stop shaking.

People clear out in a blur you barely see, crossing themselves and muttering Amens. You remain a statue and resist the urge to bolt when Joseph bee-lines to your pew. It's clear any attempt to run through the leaving congregation will end in a Peggy pileup with you mashed against the floor.

The man's shirted at least, dressed up nice and dapper for his service, wearing new glasses that you haven't smashed yet. When he extends his hands, you rise as if pulled by a string.

"I'm glad you're doing well," he greets, clasping your left shoulder. He does that a lot, is touchy-feely like that. You don't mind it sometimes. This is one of those times.

"Sure." You force him to look at the arm he avoided, the one John fucked to Hell and back. "Doing fan-fuckin'-tastic."

He just smiles, unfazed, and God, you hate it.

"Suffering is abundant here. Every man and woman in our flock has waded through the dark waters you find yourself entrenched in now. I myself have earned and overcome every scar you see on my body."

"Joseph Seed," you force out, his utter, unbreakable devotion maddening. A women scoots by you, rubbernecking hard. "You are under arrest for kidnapping with intent to harm along with countless other charges. Sooner or later-"

"Deputy." His smile widens as he rubs your shoulder with a thumb. "We're a little past that, aren't we?"

It kills you to admit it. You stare into those sharp blue eyes tinted more of a green behind his glasses.

"It really is nice to see you here. I hope you believe that."

"And where is here? Your compound?"

"You don't recognize it?" His arm drapes around your shoulder, inviting you to behold the church, the familiar two monitors on either side of the pulpit, the Eden's Gate cross hanging and unlit. "This is where the Lord first brought you to me. Where you washed ashore on our beaches, and Reckoning convoyed."

"So why bring me here? Where was I before?"

"I must say, Deputy," he ignores your questions. The dick. "I worry for you. I have spoken with John and... some of the things I heard gave me pause. He spoke of when he saw you yesterday. Of how you attacked him like a wild dog." He leans in close, drops his voice. " _Sexually_."

Joseph might as well bend you over, slap your ass, and call you the Queen of England, because that'd be just as jaw-dropping as the words muttered unto your ears right now.

"We don't judge," he continues while you mentally dissolve into a puddle and ooze away through the floorboards. "We don't ostracize. We don't hurt but help. We don't exclude but aid those with issues of self-control. Do you know where we send those lacking the strength to overcome their problems? Lacking the strength to take back their lives?"

To Jacob.

Your stomach drops like your mental state and leaks right through the floorboards chasing its coattails.

"I..."

A million pleas fight armed to the teeth for dominance: please don't send me there, I like the little white house with my little musty bed, I like my one meal a day, please don't make me sleep in a shit-coated cage and eat raw meat until I'm puking, don't make me listen to that God awful song until all I want is blood and death and muttered praises just because your precious baby brother is a filthy, miserable, sick-minded liar.

The pleas tear each other apart until there's nothing left. Nothing but Joseph taking you into his arms and cupping the back of your head, shushing you with how from this pain will come enlightenment and atonement for your misdeeds. It feels less like he walks you to the front of the church and more like you're floating, pushed on a cloud.

Arms crossed, leaning on a dark green hummer parked in the dirt, chatting with happy church-goers, Jacob catches your eye under the crystal blue sky and smiles. It feels pathetic to press against Joseph and drape your arms around his neck trying to snag the door like a cat being hauled to a bath. His crisp white shirt is cool under your fingers, against your chin.

"I forgive you," Joseph whispers, misunderstanding why you cling to him, holding you tight in both arms while forcing you back. "Once your behavior is corrected, you can return to us healthy, apologize to John, and I'm positive he will forgive you as well. Believe me, this is not the end, but the beginning."

"John is-"

The words are snatched from your mouth as two men flanking Jacob snatch you from Joseph. He manages to stroke your cheek once in farewell before you're dragged to the hummer. They're big guys, but the reason you fight is bigger, and when it's clear the only body they'll load into the backseat is your corpse, one wrenches your arms behind your back while the other fetches rope.

Your infected arm is bleeding again and you've got a fresh black eye under another blindfold by the time you're in the backseat and cruising down the road.

At what must be the first stop sign, the car is silent and unmoving for a long while. It's easy to fill in the blanks: Jacob looking back from the driver's seat to eye you up and down, probably draping an arm over the steering wheel, probably smiling when he finally addresses you.

"Morning, killer."

* * *

They're nice boots.

"You were so quiet. What happened?"

They're tan, dirty, and laced at the ankle through six holes on either side of the tongue.

"You never said a word before. Now you're snapping like a wolf?"

The toe of the shoe is the dirtiest. Mud contours worn-in grooves and clings to floppy laces.

"You used to be so good."

His pants legs are not quite as dirty as the boots they're tucked into.

"Now you wanna sing? Like a little bird?"

He shifts his weight. You keep burning his shoes into your memory.

"Wanna sing, chickadee? I know a good song."

When he crouches down, the toe of his shoe digs into the dirt.

"Hey. Look at me."

His knee hits the ground when he leans lower and tries to peer into your face.

"Ooooonly..."

You look up.

Jacob is smiling, crouched outside your cage, the second half of that line stuck on his lips where it remains while you stare at his mouth waiting for it with both fists clenched. Your finger twitches, aching for a trigger to pull.

"You know I wasn't sure about you at first." He chuckles and nods. "But you're a real keeper."

You swallow spit heavy like lead in your mouth, leaning forward, waiting, waiting.

"Did John not let you shower? You smell like death." He taps the cage. "Tell you what. You can clean up in the river. That's your shooting arm, isn't it? If you're not careful, you'll lose that."

Your mind is a strainer, sifting his words for a sung, drawn-out "you". Anticipation strings up every atom in your body, taut,  _waiting_ for it even as Jacob stands and leaves you poised in the cage, waiting and waiting, staring at the empty space he left.

A crying boy no older than sixteen is shoved into the cage at some point, decked out in Whitetail Militia green, favoring a bleeding calf. He shouts curses at the Peggies who shoved him in and scoots to the wall furthest from you, sniveling and shaking.

By the time your muscles relax enough to let you slump, the sun is painting the sky dark orange. Jacob brought you here in the morning, so you've been sitting here for... Well, you'd rather not think about it. You stretch out tired muscles, sucking in a shaky breath as cold reality settles in: a familiar emptiness in your stomach and dryness in your mouth.

It's your same old cage, the cage that held you for a week before, that Joseph knelt against and described murdering his baby daughter through. Your cage-mate's still crying, face pressed to his knees.

"Hey." When you speak, he jolts as if you fired a gun. "Quit it."

"I'm-I'm sorry," he sobs, shaking like a sapling in autumn.

"Not for me. For you. Tears. That's valuable water."

It sinks in slow, but boy does it sink; how his eyes widen and his face screws up with fear. He sits and shakes while the sun begins to set, but not a single tear more rolls down those smooth, wet cheeks. It's hard to ignore how the tears have been replaced by a low groaning in his throat and occasional whispers about loving his mother.

"When'd you get here?" you ask, to shut him up.

"What? Like... Evening." He looks up and wipes his face. "When the sun was a little higher than now."

"You haven't been here the whole day?"

"No. Have you?"

"No," you tell him, then look away.

Distant wolves bark and your stomach grumbles and the kid does a shitty job trying to hide how much he stares. You're almost grateful when Jacob comes back to take you from it, grabs your arm, and pulls you from the cage. He doesn't grab your infected one, because he's not a petty bitch like John Seed.

That thought gets a laugh out of you, your first smile since you were captured. It feels nice. How many days is it now? Sixteen? Seventeen? This is your first day out of that tiny white house yet your heart aches as if torn from a lover.

You follow Jacob off the lot like a good girl, eyes glued to the pistol in his holster, wondering if you could even yank it out in time let alone flick the safety off and get a vital organ. You're so lost in the daydream while you're walking, the river seems to flow forth from nowhere.

You're by a dock with wet socks and wet shoes. Jacob is leaning against a nearby tree, watching a deer some feet away pick at leaves from a bush.

The first thing you do is kneel and drink from the water, spitting out grains of dirt and bits of leaf. Second item on the to-do list is washing your JOHN IS MY SAVIOR. It's still surreal that that phrase is as much a part of your body now as a freckle or birthmark. Though last time you checked, birthmarks don't burn when cool water touches them, nor are they swollen and bleed at the drop of a hat.

You beat the shit out of Joseph when he first came into your room that day, but what you wouldn't give now for his heavenly fingers smoothing more gauze over these wounds. The mere thought of it brings a small bit of relief. It's not as disturbing as it should be, feeling calmed at the thought of Joseph's touch. Maybe the little radio back at your house has been rotting your brain.

"Take this."

At first you think the river was Blissed when you see Jacob holding out a pistol by the barrel. A glance confirms it's the pistol from his holster, the object of your daydream.

You stand up slow, walk to him slow, and reach out even slower. Its weight almost slips from your wet hand.

"Two minutes," he says, while you debate pressing the barrel to his chest and pulling the trigger, wonder if this is somehow a trap. He glances over his shoulder to a dirt path winding up the hillside. "Maybe one and a half. Eh, you get one."

"What?" you breathe, too hung up on your fear and his mumbling to process the approaching purr of truck engines and rumble of tires on dirt.

You take your eyes off Jacob for a second to a blur of green and black behind him, but a second is all he needs to reach his back pocket and flick open a small brown box. You see a vehicle park and a door open. Then all you see is red.

"Minute starts now."

A bullet pops the driver's head. Two more pierce the stomach of the passenger before she can get out the door.

"Good."

A woman in the backseat crumples to a knee outside the truck, reaching for a gun on her waist that her hand never makes it to. A single bullet takes out a couple stopping a quad beside her.

"Very nice. Keep going."

A man on foot who screams  ** _DEPUTY, STOP_**  catches both your attention and a bullet to the chest. A woman is crying, trying to hunker behind a tree to his right. Two bullets silence her.

"Perfect. Thirty seconds left."

Your heart is less beating than vibrating in your chest. A fresh mag is shoved into your hand. Your right arm aches, but it's steady enough to plug two more men, one of whom hesitates after aiming down his sights. Jacob chuckles nearby. Too slow. Too weak.

"Two more. Here."

A man and woman are crouched across the river, guns aimed at you. You only shoot twice, but a third shot rings in your ears before something slams into your shoulder and shoves you to the ground. Your finger's so tense on the trigger, you fire two more shots when you hit the dirt, one into the water and one at a bush on the bank.

"Sloppy. Time's up."

You keep shooting until the magazine's empty and the gun's ripped from your hand. Then your finger twitches on air, stuck in a rhythm even after Jacob hooks your arm and hauls you to your feet.

"Not bad."

A warm tingle of pride makes your lips curl. Your second smile of the day.

You leave as blind as you came, warmth heating your body and accenting every step you take over the corpses, up the path, and past a white flag stabbed into the earth beside a long airstrip. The smile you aim at Jacob's back falls lower and lower as the setting sun does. There's a deep, gnawing sickness in your gut separate from usual hunger.

The light is fading, and you're not sure what you're doing here, but you're sure you hate the sight of the man before you, so you look away and catch a glimpse of a poster duct taped to a sign on the side of the road.

'Eulogy for Eli,' you make out in the dark, 'Whitetail Militia + civilians welcome! Along Moccassin River behind Lansdowne Airstrip at dusk. Look for the flag!'

Your legs stop. The world stops. And Jacob stops with it.

"Get a move on, chickadee," he calls back.

You go for the gun when you rush him - stupid, stupid, stupid, you  _know_ it's empty - and when that earns you a punch to the face, you bite his dirty fingers until you taste blood. He wails on the side of your head, gets black dots swimming in your vision, has to pull a John Seed and squeeze your wounded arm to get you off.

"Fuck," he swears under his breath and shoves. You trip over your feet and bruise your ass on the pavement.

"Civilians?! You _sick FUCK_!"

Jacob spits on the road and wipes the blood from his hand onto his jeans.

"I swear to God the next time you open that fucking box and give me a gun, I'm blowing your head off."

"Don't swear to God," he warns.

You kick his shin when he steps close enough, but he just grabs your shoe and yanks. Your shirt rides up, and the road scrapes your back.

"Why?!" You know why. "They were innocent! Why?!"

"You know why."

Your foot is dropped. You can't see his face in the dark, only his form when he steps over you, those nice tan boots with six laces each planted on either side of your hips.

"Because they are weak." He takes your face in both hands. "And you are strong."


	3. Chapter 3

"Why did John write this?"

"Shit, you tell me."

Faith smiles, tracing the swollen J on your knuckles. It's the smile of a daisy in a field of weeds: sick, choking, and beautiful, pearly white like the datura flowers around you. Just as toxic. That J she's touching used to hurt, everything used to hurt, but it doesn't hurt now.

"I think John's sweet on you," she whispers, brown hair moved by the breeze. It reminds you of gossip with your bestie back in high school, hiding during gym and sharing secrets, like the world has ended and left you two behind. It feels just as intimate now as it did all those years ago.

"Got a funny way of showing it," you slur. She giggles.

"He gets attached to things easily. We all do. To fill that hole."

Stars twinkle everywhere, masquerading Heaven on a Godless plane. Faith's grass-stained knees are touching, bare feet playing footsie with your blood-stained boots, Bliss flowers swaying all around you.

"I get John," you realize in a rush, desperate to rant about the Hell you've endured, even to another Seed. "See, John's easy. He's all pain, all him in control. I can handle Jacob, too. Dominance and strength, I got that shit. I trained to be a cop. But what the hell does Joseph want? For me to pray every night and say a hundred Hail Marys?"

A laugh tickles your ears from behind the dainty hand she covers her mouth with.

"Does he have to want something?" She plucks a Bliss flower near her thigh and places it on yours. "What if he just wants you?"

"Don't tell me he's sweet on me, too. For the love of God."

She giggles again, doesn't cover it this time. "I'd say everything The Father does is for the love of God, Deputy."

"And Jacob?" you ask to round it off, cupping a hand around the flower to protect it from the breeze.

Faith's beauty doesn't all come from being buzzed off your gourd. It's mostly in her eyes. Her soul is shining in them, pure and gentle at its core, but roughed up around the edges. You see a scared little girl, a woman, and a soldier all in one. You see yourself in them.

"Do you think  _I'm_ in love with you?" she asks, head tilted.

You don't get to answer. She takes back the flower, puts it in her mouth stem first, then kisses you through the poisonous petals, soft and sweet and smooth. A second kiss follows, then a third, then you stop counting. You're yanked down by the undertow of her full lips, licking ivory petals, and find yourself on top of her, pressing down, breathing in her scent. Bliss cloys and makes your head spin.

"Deputy..." she leans back, carding fingers through your dirty hair, her own hair splayed ribbons in the grass. "You're sweet on him, too, you know..."

"Oh yeah? Which one?"

Faith grins against your mouth through the Bliss flower.

" _Really? Do you think it's only one?_ "

A sharp gasp around a mouthful of drool nearly drags you through death's door. You're choking and coughing, suddenly upside down and watching the shaded ground drift by through tear-filled eyes.

Faith is gone. The Bliss is gone. The blinding flowers are now forest bushes and tall grass.

You're being hauled like a sack of potatoes over somebody's shoulder, blood pooling in your head, sweat dripping from your face. Whoever this somebody is has a taste for camo shirts, tan boots, and the strength to carry you like a feather. So...

"Shush. You'll be alright, girl."

...who else but Jacob?

"Wha're you-" your speech slurs out like a wisdom tooth patient. Collect yourself and try again. "Wha' the hell are you doin'?"

"Saving you."

"The fuck...?"

His unchecked stride makes you bounce, hyper-aware of his arm on your legs, his shoulder cutting into your gut and pressing on your bladder. You push at his back with weak arms and try to hold your head up so blood stops jack hammering your skull. The scent of sweat and dirt wafts from both of you.

"Ow... God. Where the hell is Faith?"

"Faith? Halfway across the county."

Your confusion's got to be palpable, but Jacob keeps to himself, content to cart you like a misbehaving toddler to wherever he has in mind. You're at an indistinct location, but the tall pines point to Whitetail. Maybe Cheeseburger will come running if you scream loud enough.

The last thing you remember is the river, the stench of death, the tussle with Jacob by the airstrip, and sleeping in your cage with that Whitetail kid, arm thrown over him while he sniffled in his sleep. Then you were high as a kite and sucking face with Faith like two teens at a drive-in.

"Get off..." You push up, squeeze his camo shirt. "Put me down, I can walk."

"You can't," he says. "Your leg's broken."

That's a good joke. A great one, even. So great you start laughing hysterically. This little family in Montana is tearing you mentally and physically apart, and that is, honest to God, the funniest thing you've heard all week. So you order tickets to the denial train, laughing your head off. You've found that laughing is easier than crying.

"Haha! You've got to be fucking me! Tell me you're fucking me!"

"Is that what you want me to tell you?" Jacob scoffs. "Afraid I'm not."

"Oh, my God... Haha!"

You deflate on his shoulder, cracking into a million hopeless shards. What a fool, thinking escape would be that easy. Repetition numbed you, mostly from John, made you think you could break out unscathed as many times as needed. All luck runs out eventually and, for you, eventually seems to be now.

They might really kill you. They really might.

"I can't feel it... My leg."

"Correct," Jacob says, stopping at the edge of a road before crossing. "You're on Bliss. You went nuts when I tried to check on you."

"I told you I'd kill you if you fucked with me again, asshole."

"Oh, I know you're a rabid dog." You can hear the proud smile. "That's why you're a keeper."

That wording sticks. They might really kill you, but maybe not today. Maybe not with Jacob.

"Did I do any damage?"

He huffs out a laugh, pats your thigh, and murmurs, "There's my chickadee..." It flirts dangerously close to endearing and leaves you tongue-tied for a bit.

"...Did I?"

"You got a few punches in. Would've dug my eyes out if your leg wasn't already snapped."

"Wait... You didn't break my leg?"

"Once again, afraid not, Deputy."

A white truck with mud stains peels by, and you almost shit yourself at the blaring horn, doubly so when a cultist leans out and yells "Cull the herd!" When you slip on his shoulder, Jacob grunts and rights you. He doesn't speak to the Peggies, but the warmth of his hand leaves your leg, signaling to the driver. You continue in the direction they took off from.

"Where are we going...."

"That's what makes you special," he says, adjusting his grip. A bolt of pain strikes your right leg, but it's faint, so your body must still be riding the Bliss even if your mind isn't. Either that, or your body's in shock. "Some fear death. Killing. They don't have the stomach for it, like that lost sheep in your cage. But you're different."

There's nothing more annoying than how the Seeds try to dissect your psyche through monologue. Especially when you're hurt and they're 99% right.

"You're different," he repeats, voice vibrating through his back into your arms. "Most people deal  _with_ death. You  _deal_ it. You lead, and death follows. You've got the stomach, the mind, the soul for it. And that's what makes you special, Deputy. That's why you're a keeper."

You exercise your right to free speech and don't say a goddamn thing. When you were training back in the academy, your commanding officer always praised your perseverance and determination. He would boast to the other cadets, often embarrassingly so, that even if you were taken down in combat, whoever managed that would have to watch their back when they turned to walk away.

You wonder where he is now. How ashamed he would be at the state of his best, slung over a man who's tortured and killed more people than you'd like to know, waxing poetic about how you were born to do the same.

There's not much time for reminiscing. Jacob stops and dumps you on the earth, dodging how you try to smack him on the way down.

"Ow...! Fuck you!"

"Easy. Look who broke your leg."

Strung up on a shoddy cross in the grass a few feet away is a thin, half-naked body, shirtless and bleeding. His hands are bound at the wrist with barbed wire, legs bound with the same at the ankle, a perfectly crude imitation of Jesus Christ. Bruises decorate his face, one of the eyes swollen shut, blood running from his lip to his chest.

"What is this?" you breathe.

"He did it in your sleep," Jacob says, leaving you on the grass and walking to the figure. "He thought it would make him a man."

"...have my Mom," you hear whimpered from the cross. "They have my Mom..."

You didn't recognize the young face through all the blood and gore. It's your doe-eyed cage-mate, the very same you comforted to sleep last night from a desire to keep rare innocence out of the hands of corruption.

If Jacob is waiting for something, a speech, a plea bargain, a death sentence, you don't have much to offer. There's no resistance coming to save him, because you murdered their leader in cold blood. There's no law enforcement to the rescue, because she's damaged and cracked on the ground.

The kid's crying again like you lectured him not to, louder and louder the closer Jacob gets, snot running from his nose to his chin, but you guess there's no need to conserve water. Not anymore.

"When we mistake the word 'strong' for 'cowardly'," Jacob preaches, pacing before the cross, "we often find it instills us with false courage."

"No..." the boy sobs. Your right leg resists when you try to stand, like your body itself knows there's no happy ending here.

"We believe it gives us the fortitude to do what must be done. But only when the conditions of the cowardice have been met. When our opponent is hindered or, say." Jacob stops. "Unconscious and unaware."

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," the kid begs, head drooping. "I'm s... I'm sorry..."

"Let him go!" You lurch forward, about all you can do in your state. "You're crazy. He was scared. You've ruined these people's lives!"

You might be a little crazy yourself, pardoning the little shit who royally screwed you over, broke your damn leg in your sleep to gain favor with a madman. But he's just a teenager, forced to spend his school days confronting blood and death instead of hanging with friends and hating his parents like other normal teens in America.

Jacob pivots on his heel at your outburst, slow, deliberate, amused, and it may be wishful thinking, but you believe something passes between your locked eyes. Something human and raw that connects you in that moment and breaches a gap of understanding.

The only real thing human and raw here is the kid when Jacob kneels by the base of the cross and burns him alive with a flip lighter. The wood takes a good long while to spark and even longer to lick up his flesh, to heat the barbed wire into his skin. All you can do is close your eyes to block it, lashing out when Jacob picks you up again, but the agonized yells of a slowly dying boy rack to the depths of your soul.

It echoes in your ears even after he's dead. The horrid scent lingers in your nose for miles. Eventually, you kick your broken leg against Jacob's chest so you pass out and don't have to smell it anymore.

* * *

"He will wipe away every tear from their eyes."

The whisper of a satin touch is caressing your arm, and it's borderline orgasmic, how long you've waited, how much you've suffered, how disturbing it is that you honestly, genuinely  _wished_  for this.

"And death shall be no more."

"I've been waiting for you to do this. Is that weird to say?" Your reassurance is a glance from stony blue eyes. "It is, isn't it? ...Feels weird."

"Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore."

He encases your swollen arm tight, too tight, but pressure is a welcome relief from constant, stinging pain.

"For the former things have passed away.”

"If I find out I'm Blissed again, I'm gonna be so pissed off."

"It's not weird to say." Joseph holds your bandaged hand. "And you have not been Blissed."

Your old white room is a sight for sore eyes. And a sore arm. And a sore leg. You're propped up in bed, Joseph's propped up in a chair he dragged in by your bedside, playing nurse again, and you're a little high on painkillers. It's been a while since you were dazed on something that comes with a prescription.

The white pills slipped into your vegetable soup are some heavy duty shit, which doesn't surprise you. If Eden's Gate has dispatch on their side, surely they've also touched some doctors and pharmacists with their doomsday rhetoric.

Whatever it is has you a little loopy, a little friendly, and very over-talkative. Joseph's leaning forward in his chair, shirtless again to show those pretty sins, probably enjoying the lack of a wild woman trying to rip his trachea out with her teeth for once. You couldn't bite much if you wanted to, even without the drugs. Jacob's a certified expert at fucking people up.

You stayed in his custody for a few hellish days after the burning, but you suspect he grew bored of you. His Peggies coaxed and taunted, hucked in burnt meat more than once and joked that it was recently grilled on natural wood. You never knew if they were lying or not, if it was really from that kid. You just stopped eating. Stopped talking. Stopped lashing out. Went back to before you were his little chickadee.

A Peggy drove you home from your vacation days ago, starved and slumped in the backseat, untended right leg on fire. You can't say you miss it, though at this point, who knows what you'll say. Apparently anything between vague fawning and sacrilegious threats. Joseph really should have left by now with how many times you've called his God a little bitch. Perhaps he appreciates the opportunity for debate. Or the vague fawning.

"You won't break me," you mumble, a giggle in your words, grinning at his thoughtful face. It feels like denial again. "You won't. I'll beat you. All of you. I'll beat _God_."

He strokes each of your fingers then resets to the thumb and repeats, and dear God, this must be how Eden's Gate recruited so many in such a short time: gentle massages after weeks of pain that make your toes curl. Conditioning like a dog with a treat, at its finest. Jacob would be proud.

"Beating God is a contradiction, my child." Joseph's voice is illegally soft and kind and makes you feel like Faith did in that Bliss dream days ago. Like the world has ended and left you two alone. His eyes are as severe as ever, bleeding the judgment of Heaven. "That's a truth I learned at an early age."

"Oh yeah?" you humor, centering your broken leg on the two stacked pillows he's set it on. Your belly's full for the first time in a week, and Joseph's voice is so stupidly, insanely, mind-numbingly soft. You hate how much it soothes you.

"I first learned it from my father's voice, my father's fist," he recalls, keeping up the hand massage. "Little Johnny learned it fast. Jacob and I... We were stubborn. Pig-headed boys."

"Mmm," you hum, half to the massage, half to what he's saying, slouched against the headboard.

"Little Johnny would stare it in the face, crying and crying 'til I took him in my arms and Jacob took me into his. Faith wasn't raised with us, but she learned it just the same. From a different voice. Different fists."

"So now you're the fists. The cycle of abuse, huh?"

"Oh, you misunderstand, Deputy. I know you've suffered, too. It shines off you like gold." Joseph drops his voice to a murmur, leans in, and holds you captive with his gaze. "You have a home here. You're wanted. You're loved. This isn't about beating anyone. About who wins and loses. God will always win in the end. All you have to do is let us into your heart... And let the Lord into your life."

"I couldn't... just... It is about winning." The boys on the Denial Express are really starting to love you. "I have a job to do. I have to save people."

Joseph squeezes your hand, touches your matted hair. "Then who is going to save _you_?"

"Father?"

The door creaks open. Faith Seed enters in a swirl of white, wildflowers in her hair and tucked into the waistband of her dress. One slips from behind her ear as she walks and falls forgotten to the floor at her feet.

"You called?" she asks, running a palm along Joseph's bare shoulder.

"I asked Faith to watch over you," Joseph informs, releasing your hand to touch hers. Goodbye, massage, it seems. "She has a talent for nursing the ill back to health. I request you think of what I've said, Deputy. I will pray for you to see the light."

He rises, pecks Faith on the forehead, and leaves, brushing loose another flower from her hair. It flutters down like a butterfly wing while she takes his seat and clasps her hands in her lap, starts humming a song you don't recognize, kicking a foot against the floor.

You sit and watch her. She watches back.

"No drugs."

"I'm sorry?" Her smile's so pretty you can't tell if it's fake or not. It's the smile of a daisy in a field of weeds: sick, choking, and beautiful.

" _No_ fuckin' drugs."

How she lifts a hand and giggles seems so familiar. You look to the barred window to keep from staring.

"They told me you're already on painkillers. I would never gift you the Bliss now. You need to confront this, this punishment from God. It's the only way you'll grow." Her soft brown eyes settle on the hand that Joseph held. "I know you're probably wondering, 'Why did John write this?'"

You can't not stare now. Her voice, her tone, her enunciation is a mirror match from something dreadfully familiar. You could swear up and down, to Joseph, John, Jacob, and God that she has said those words before. Was it from a dream? Is this a dream...?

"He aims to help you, not to hurt. He always does." Faith reaches for that hand she's focused on, nodding to her own words, eyes twinkling in the sunlight. "We must lead by example. You'll learn soon. Everything The Father does is for the love of God, Deputy."

You recoil. "What are you doing? What is this?"

Faith freezes, eyes wide, then offers a smile like a slow hand to a mangy dog.

"It's okay. Everything will be okay... I know it's hard to take that leap. To fill that hole. We all do."

It can't be a coincidence. You're convinced it can't. Drugged up, paranoid, privy to her manipulation, how she gets into your head, you're convinced.

"This has happened before. You've said this shit before. Are you even fucking real right now?"

"You're so troubled," is all you get, murmured low and sympathetic, coupled with her hand squeezing yours. "You poor thing, you have suffered so much..."

"Deputy."

Your title follows two knocks on the door, sing-sung by John who gets a step in the room before pausing.

"Faith," he says far less gaily in retrospect.

"Brother John." While Faith's disposition is sunshine, you must look as high and confused as you feel, glancing between them, still fretting whether this is all a dream. "Did you need something?"

"Ah... No. Just wanted a few words with her." If John's eyes were arrows, you'd be tacked to the wall by now, a human pin cushion. "Private words. I'll come back later."

The knife handle in his back pocket implies he had much more to share than just some private words. He steps on a flower Faith dropped as he turns, leaves a white and green bruise on the wood.

You're still staring at the door when Faith gives you a smile. "I think John's sweet on you," she whispers, and breath catches in your chest.

"What... the fuck are you doing to me... How are you doing this? What is this...?"

She shifts to the bed while you mumble, reaching take both your hands in hers. You almost shove her away, almost punch her and hobble to the door, finally make your great escape when your chances of survival are at their all time worst.

"Deputy..." You're breathing in huffs, tripping over her words, crushing her hands. "Relax... I want you to close your eyes with me. To go on a journey with me."

Her eyes shut, and yours follow suit, if only to somehow make that escape, even if only mentally. The bed, your leg, your bandaged arm melt away. All you feel are her hands in yours, her weight dipping the mattress. This must be a dream. This must be. Maybe telling yourself that will make it more true.

"This exercise is life-changing for people who are overwhelmed. Like you." Her fingers rub yours, softer than Joseph's, which have held guns, Bibles, struggled through life. Faith has struggled, too, but in different ways. From different fists. "People coming to terms with leaving their old lives behind to begin anew. People struggling with that leap of faith."

You take a deep breath and nod. At least she's stopped following the script of your dream.

"Picture happiness," she whispers. "Picture yourself happy and loved, finally at home with the world. In love with life itself."

In the blackness of your lids, you see nothing but that: blackness. You try and picture clear skies, grassy fields, smiling faces, but they burn away in a wisp of smoke that forms a mushroom cloud miles high. The blue sky bleeds red, the grass crisps to brown.

"I can't..."

When you try to pull away, Faith digs her nails in, deeper and deeper, wrenches them until you gasp in pain. Warm liquid that has to be blood runs down the back of your hand.

"Picture it. Being happy and safe. Picture it, Deputy. Take your leap."

Leg broken, arm butchered, high and unwashed and injured on this bed, you begin to picture it. You do.

You picture four figures against the crimson sky, silhouetted by ash and ruin like demons, three broad, one petite. They're looking down at you beneath them, crumpled on the ground, cracked and broken. Each one looks a lot like the Seed family, and what you feel is a lot like the total opposite of being happy and safe.

You can't settle on which one to look at. Which one is the least horrible, which one the least likely to dig your shallow grave in this Heaven they call Eden's Gate. She doesn't do it herself, not in reality, but in your mind's eye, Faith Seed stands forward from the others, steps up and completes the dream script with a smile that chills your blood cold in your veins.

" _Really? Do you think it's only one?_ "

You don't sleep that night.

You lay awake and in pain, nursing the red crescents on your hand, wishing Joseph would come massage them away, haunted by the image of a teen boy burning at a stake, and waiting for John to slip in with a knife and slit your throat in your sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The gang's all here.


End file.
